Book picks similar to
Adolescence: An Anthropological Inquiry by Alice Schlegel
anthropology
cultural-studies
evolutionary-perspective-develop
nonfiction
Thy Neighbor's Wife
Gay Talese - 1980
Now considered a classic, this fascinating personal odyssey and revealing public reflection on American sexuality changed the way Americans looked at themselves and one another.From the Paperback edition.
The Survivor's Quest: Recovery After Encountering Evil
HealingJourney - 2014
Sometimes, evil can be difficult to detect. It can be masked by charm and flattery, and it is often perpetuated by pathological lying, projection, and various other mind games. No matter how hidden it may be, evil always devastates—and isolates—any normal person who is touched by it. The Survivor’s Quest is written by HealingJourney, the former target of a psychopathic predator. He presented himself to her as a “nice guy,” but he turned out to be the precise opposite. As a result of the encounter and its sudden end, HealingJourney found herself overwhelmed by despair. But she soon realized that she was not alone in her new understanding of humanity, and she was able to find her way out of the darkness. Throughout the book, she shares the struggles and triumphs she experienced during her recovery. She also offers validation, encouragement, and practical strategies for her fellow survivors. If you have been hurt by someone with a personality disorder and are looking for recovery support, this book is for you.
Spark
Patricia Leavy - 2019
One day an invitation arrives. Peyton has been selected to attend a luxurious all-expense-paid seminar in Iceland, where participants, billed as some of the greatest thinkers in the world, will be charged with answering one perplexing question. Meeting her diverse teammates--two neuroscientists, a philosopher, a dance teacher, a collage artist, and a farmer--Peyton wonders what she could ever have to contribute. The ensuing journey of discovery will transform the characters' work, their biases, and themselves. This suspenseful novel shows that the answers you seek can be found in the most unlikely places. It can be read for pleasure, is a great choice for book clubs, and can be used as unique and inspiring reading in qualitative research and other courses in education, sociology, social work, psychology, and communication.
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Chuck Klosterman - 2003
With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Internet porn, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus freaks, and the real difference between apples and oranges (of which there is none). And don't even get him started on his love life and the whole Harry-Met-Sally situation. Whether deconstructing Saved by the Bell episodes or the artistic legacy of Billy Joel, the symbolic importance of The Empire Strikes Back or the Celtics/Lakers rivalry, Chuck will make you think, he'll make you laugh, and he'll drive you insane -- usually all at once. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs is ostensibly about art, entertainment, infotainment, sports, politics, and kittens, but -- really -- it's about us. All of us. As Klosterman realizes late at night, in the moment before he falls asleep, "In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself.'" Read to believe.
Flesh and Blood: A History of the Cannibal Complex
Reay Tannahill - 1994
Reay Tannahill, author of previous studies on eating and sex, takes us on a fascinating historical tour of this darkest of gastronomic compulsions--to feed our current fascination with people who eat people illustrations.
Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent
Meredith Small - 1998
But as scientists are discovering, much of the trusted advice that has been passed down through generations needs to be carefully reexamined.A thought-provoking combination of practical parenting information and scientific analysis, Our Babies, Ourselves is the first book to explore why we raise our children the way we do--and to suggest that we reconsider our culture's traditional views on parenting.In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture--and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies.Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breast-feeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her?These are but a few of the important questions Small addresses, and the answers not only are surprising but may even change the way we raise our children.
An Intimate History of Humanity
Theodore Zeldin - 1994
"An intellectually dazzling view of our past and future."--Time magazineContents1. How humans have repeatedly lost hope, and how new encounters, and a new pair of spectacles, revive them2. How men and women have slowly learned to have interesting conversations3. How people searching for their roots are only beginning to look far and deep enough4. How some people have acquired an immunity to loneliness5. How new forms of love have been invented6. Why there has been more progress in cooking than in sex7. How the desire that men feel for women, and for other men, has altered through the centuries8. How respect has become more desirable than power9. How those who want neither to give orders nor to receive them can become intermediaries10. How people have freed themselves from fear by finding new fears11. How curiosity has become the key to freedom12. Why it has become increasingly difficult to destroy one’s enemies13. How the art of escaping from one’s troubles has developed, but not the art of knowing where to escape to14. Why compassion has flowered even in stony ground15. Why toleration has never been enough16. Why even the privileged are often somewhat gloomy about life, even when they can have anything the consumer society offers, and even after sexual liberation17. How travellers are becoming the largest nation in the world, and how they have learned not to see only what they are looking for18. Why friendship between men and women has been so fragile19. How even astrologers resist their destiny20. Why people have not been able to find the time to lead several lives21. Why fathers and their children are changing their minds about what they want from each other22. Why the crisis in the family is only one stage in the evolution of generosity23. How people choose a way of life, and how it does not wholly satisfy them24. How humans become hospitable to each other25. What becomes possible when soul-mates meet
I Know Just What You Mean: the Power of Friendship in Women's Lives: The Power of Friendshiping Women's Lives
Ellen Goodman - 2000
Many who once believed marriage was "the" center of life...now know that friends may be the difference between a lonely life and a lively one." In "I Know Just What You Mean," Pulitzer prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman and novelist/journalist Patricia O'Brien provide a thoughtful, deeply personal look at the enduring bonds of friendship between women. Friends for over a quarter of a century, they bring to their book the unique mix of insight and humor that only such a long and rich relationship can produce.""You might say we've been writing this book for twenty-six years. Maybe it's the logical outcome for two writing friends. It amazes us now to look back and see what we've been building: the story of our friendship is the story of our divorces, our children, careers, loves, losses, remarriages.We rarely made a move without each other's opinion or listening ear...We moved from youth through middle-age with the requisite accumulation of both wisdom and caution that -- when shared -- made each of us stronger than we would have been alone.""Drawing on interviews with numerous women from all stages of life -- teenagers, young mothers, elderly women, women in politic and business, sports and media celebrities -- the authors reach beyond their own experiences, providing an intimate look at friendships that begin everywhere from kindergarten to nursing homes. They tell the touching, funny, and sometimes painful stories of women who don't shy away from confronting the problems and demands of friendship.""When we asked women how theydefined what a close friend is, they leaped past such qualifiers to describe the impact: being known and accepted, understood to the core; trust and loyalty you can count on, having someone on your side. Having someone to share worries and secrets as well as the good stuff of life. Someone who needs you in return.""The authors explore the problems of famous friends -- how do you stay close when your best friend is one of the richest and most powerful women in the world? They write about friendships that have endured through hardship and misfortune, survived the problems of competing with each other. Looking through history and Hollywood, real life and fiction, they get to the heart of relationships between women.""Somewhere in the meaning of the word 'trust' is the assumption that a friend has your best interest at heart. Friends can be the collaborators, the instigators who make change possible. They are often the ones who urge us to take a leap, who jump with us or help us scramble back up the other side.""Throughout the book, there is an ongoing dialogue between Goodman and O'Brien that is sure to resonate with every woman who cherishes her female friends.""Talk is at the very heart of women's friendship, the core of the way women connect. It's the given, the absolute assumption of friendship. It can be serious or funny, painful or exuberant, intense or joyous. But at the heart of the connections made is one sentence that women repeat over and over: 'I know just what you mean.'""
The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
David Graeber - 2013
He then jets forward to the nineteenth century, where systems we can easily recognize as modern bureaucracies come into being. In some areas of life—like with the modern postal systems of Germany and France—these bureaucracies have brought tremendous efficiencies to modern life. But Graeber argues that there is a much darker side to modern bureaucracy that is rarely ever discussed. Indeed, in our own “utopia of rules,” freedom and technological innovation are often the casualties of systems that we only faintly understand.Provocative and timely, the book is a powerful look and history of bureaucracy over the ages and its power in shaping the world of ideas.
Get Your House Clean Now: The Home Cleaning Method Anyone Can Master
Beth McGee - 2015
You can become an expert at cleaning your home. All you need are the right tools and supplies, a little motivation, and the method that Beth McGee has perfected over 20 years as a home cleaning professional. Beth shares the products, process, and encouragement you need to make this seemingly daunting task manageable. Get Your House Clean Now: The Home Cleaning Method Anyone Can Master, is filled with unique information beyond the recycled cleaning tips you’ve seen on the Internet. This is not a seven day or 30 day course on getting your home clean. This book will prepare you to get your house clean as soon as you're ready to get started, no matter how dirty it is. Whether you just want your home to sparkle, start your own cleaning business, prepare your home to rent or flip, or help your house cleaner work most effectively for you, this book will help you do it. Beth will instill in you knowledge to last a lifetime for keeping your home clean.
White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America
Margaret A. Hagerman - 2018
In this heated context, sociologist Margaret A. Hagerman zeroes in on affluent, white kids to observe how they make sense of privilege, unequal educational opportunities, and police violence. In fascinating detail, Hagerman considers the role that they and their families play in the reproduction of racism and racial inequality in America.White Kids, based on two years of research involving in-depth interviews with white kids and their families, is a clear-eyed and sometimes shocking account of how white kids learn about race. In doing so, this book explores questions such as, "How do white kids learn about race when they grow up in families that do not talk openly about race or acknowledge its impact?" and "What about children growing up in families with parents who consider themselves to be 'anti-racist'?"Featuring the actual voices of young, affluent white kids and what they think about race, racism, inequality, and privilege, White Kids illuminates how white racial socialization is much more dynamic, complex, and varied than previously recognized. It is a process that stretches beyond white parents' explicit conversations with their white children and includes not only the choices parents make about neighborhoods, schools, peer groups, extracurricular activities, and media, but also the choices made by the kids themselves.By interviewing kids who are growing up in different racial contexts--from racially segregated to meaningfully integrated and from politically progressive to conservative--this important book documents key differences in the outcomes of white racial socialization across families. And by observing families in their everyday lives, this book explores the extent to which white families, even those with anti-racist intentions, reproduce and reinforce the forms of inequality they say they reject.
Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It
Thomas de Zengotita - 2004
From Princess Diana's funeral to the prospect of mass terror, from oral sex in the Oval Office to cowboy politics in distant lands, from high school cliques to marital therapy, from blogs to reality TV to the Weather Channel, Mediated takes us on an original and astonishing tour of every department of our media-saturated society. The implications are personal and far-reaching at the same time. Thomas de Zengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine and holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University. He teaches at the Dalton School and at the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. "Reading Thomas de Zengotita's Mediated is like spending time with a wild, wired friend-the kind who keeps you up late and lures you outside of your comfort zone with a speed rap full of brilliant notions."-O magazine "A fine roar of a lecture about how the American mind is shaped by (too much) media...."-Washington Post "Deceptively colloquial, intellectually dense...This provocative, extreme and compelling work is a must-read for philosophers of every stripe."-Publishers Weekly
You're Not Crazy And You're Not Alone
Stacey Robbins - 2013
Stacey explores the common areas that women with Hashi's struggle: like perfectionism and self-rejection -- and common past experiences -- like abuse or injury. Stacey inspires women to look at their lives, and Hashimoto's differently, and to use this diagnosis as an opportunity for inner healing, greater happiness, and loving themselves.
Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders: Homeless in San Francisco
Teresa Gowan - 2010
Within a few years, however, what had been perceived as a national crisis came to be seen as a nuisance, with early sympathies for the plight of the homeless giving way to compassion fatigue and then condemnation. Debates around the problem of homelessness—often set in terms of sin, sickness, and the failure of the social system—have come to profoundly shape how homeless people survive and make sense of their plights. In Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, Teresa Gowan vividly depicts the lives of homeless men in San Francisco and analyzes the influence of the homelessness industry on the streets, in the shelters, and on public policy. Gowan shows some of the diverse ways that men on the street in San Francisco struggle for survival, autonomy, and self-respect. Living for weeks at a time among homeless men—working side-by-side with them as they collected cans, bottles, and scrap metal; helping them set up camp; watching and listening as they panhandled and hawked newspapers; and accompanying them into soup kitchens, jails, welfare offices, and shelters—Gowan immersed herself in their routines, their personal stories, and their perspectives on life on the streets. She observes a wide range of survival techniques, from the illicit to the industrious, from drug dealing to dumpster diving. She also discovered that prevailing discussions about homelessness and its causes—homelessness as pathology, homelessness as moral failure, and homelessness as systemic failure—powerfully affect how homeless people see themselves and their ability to change their situation. Drawing on five years of fieldwork, this powerful ethnography of men living on the streets of the most liberal city in America, Hobos, Hustlers, and Backsliders, makes clear that the way we talk about issues of extreme poverty has real consequences for how we address this problem—and for the homeless themselves.
See Me
Hailey Rodgers - 2019
So why is it that so many young adults identify themselves as unsatisfied or unhappy with their lives? There is a misconception that in order to be happy you must first be successful. In fact, the opposite is true: you must be happy first in order to be successful. This raises the question: How do I become happy? The answer: Discover your authentic self. See Me is about the importance of living authentically as a young adult. While young adults tend to talk about authenticity, it can actually be the hardest time in your life to feel confident in yourself. This book is a tool to help you stay true to who you are amidst the pressure to conform to societal norms. It aims to inspire young adults through guiding principles and the incredible stories of others who comprehend the value non-conformity and consistently work to live an authentic life.